In a dystopian future, the first girl born in fifty years comes of age in the hands of a totalitarian conglomerate.
Creative Staff
Story: Giovanna and Tom Fletcher
What They Say
On the first day, no one really noticed. All those babies wrapped in blue blankets–not a pink one in sight. On the third day, people were scared–a statistic-defying abundance of blue. Not just entire hospitals, not only entire countries, but the entire world. Boys. Only boys.
Until Eve. The only girl born in fifty years. The savior of mankind. Kept protected, towering above a ruined world under a glass dome of safety until she is ready to renew the human race.
But when the time comes to find a suitor, Eve and Bram–a young man whose job is to prepare Eve for this moment–begin to question the plan they’ve known all along. Eve doesn’t only want safety, and she doesn’t only want protection. She wants the truth. She wants freedom.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
What would happen to humankind if the gender balance tipped completely toward males? This book’s premise is an interesting one, especially since societies like China’s are dealing with the fallout from sex-selective abortions. Unfortunately, Eve of Man doesn’t so much delve into social change as it uses the scenario as the basis for a futuristic princess-locked-in-a-tower tale.
And main character Eve is literally confined at the top of Extinction Prevention Organization’s 2.5-mile high tower. Because the youngest women other than her are in their mid-sixties, Eve is the one hot commodity, and the EPO has made it their business to shield her from the opposite sex until she’s mature enough to take a shot at another generation. But now that Eve is sixteen she gets to choose her future mate from three potential males. As you might guess, Eve ends up falling for someone outside of this preselected pool.
The cover flap blurb teases, “But how do you choose between love and the future of the human race?” The question insinuates that Eve’s choice (Bram) is lacking somehow, like he has a genetic disorder or is infertile. That would make for interesting drama. However, the story boils down to revealing EPO as the big bad out to maintain worldwide domination by controlling Eve’s reproductive bits while Bram is the rebel in the organization trying to break her out.
The world-building in this novel is weak, which makes for confusing storytelling. Perhaps this is because it was written by two authors, but important elements don’t get clarified as soon as they should for a sci-fi title. For instance, Bram mentions that the EPO tower is located in a place called Central in Chapter 3, but it isn’t until Chapter 37 that we learn Central was once called London. Chapter 3 also talks about an apocalyptic combination of pollution clouds, global warming sea rise, and extreme weather, which gives the impression that the outside environment is borderline uninhabitable. Two-thirds of the story later, Bram is watching all sorts of mundane activity take place out of doors. The most confusing moment for me was the introduction of Holly in Chapter 1. The prologue had already hammered home the point that Eve is the ONLY! girl on the planet, so when another “girl” shows up in Eve’s penthouse quarters, I was stuck wondering what she was. After a couple of pages without an explanation, I assumed she was a kind of AI. Then in Chapter 2 (after 11 pages of Eve /Holly chatting) they FINALLY reveal that Holly is a hologram.
And not just any hologram. She’s controlled by “pilots,” young men close to Eve’s age, and Bram is one of these pilots. While it is an interesting way for the characters to meet and fall in love, the rationale behind “Holly” is shaky. She’s an extremely expensive technology whose only purpose is to manipulate Eve. However, manipulating Eve is only valuable if Eve has any real power, and she doesn’t. Whenever she shows a hint of disagreeing, the EPO tosses out Holly and reverts to force. So if they don’t really need her permission, why waste the effort and resources to persuade her? Not to mention, their pilot standards are pretty shoddy. Bram and his cohorts are supposed to act the role of a best girlfriend, but when the jerk character pilots Holly, his jerk personality bleeds through. And when the boring guy pilots her, the boringness comes out loud and clear.
The story’s one-dimensional characters, unfortunately, are not limited to these two. The primary villains Vivian Silva and Dr. Wells are especially egregious in their respective roles of unscrupulous, arrogant corporation head and evil scientist/abusive father, but it expands to include the entire male gender. Without the kindler, gentler sex, men apparently unleashed World War III and devastated the environment. Moreover, the book asserts that men possess zero self-control and, if they see a woman, are helpless to stop themselves from raping her. It’s a narrative I find appalling and rather shocking, considering a man co-authored it.
Regarding cast diversity, the main couple is white (and gorgeous), and the other key players are also white. There are side characters who might possibly be non-white, but the physical descriptions on them are so sparse that it’s difficult to tell for certain. The single character who is definitively non-white is Diego, one of Eve’s potential mates. However, he is described in unflattering terms. (“In appearance Diego is small and uninteresting…” “His skin is rough and dark, his eyes small and beady.”) Oh, and within fifteen minutes of meeting Eve, he murders someone and gets blasted to pieces. End Diego.
I suppose it’s up to the authors to decide how to design their characters, but given that they’re depicting a worldwide problem and the setting is London, a city with a diverse population, it would’ve been nice to reflect that in their cast. For instance, the narrative mentions at least three times that Eve is struggling to learn Mandarin, so why not include a Chinese person among her attendants?
The novel isn’t without its strong points. The action and escape scenes are fast-paced and have unexpected twists. However, most of those don’t show up till the second half of the book, and by then I’m already disinterested in the fate of this couple and their world.
In Summary
The book has an interesting premise but doesn’t quite deliver. Problematic storytelling aside, the story takes what could have been an interesting commentary on gender balance, power, and traditional roles and simplifies it into a hero-must rescue-princess-from-the-evil-totalitarian-power tale. Add to that some convoluted world-building and flat characters, and it makes for a less than engaging read.
Content Grade: C
Released By: Random House Books for Young Readers
Release Date: June 18th, 2019
MSRP: $18.99
